Reply to Having Kids Is Overrated and Most People Have No Idea Until It’s Way Too Late

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Reply to "Having Kids Is Overrated and Most People Have No Idea Until It’s Way Too Late"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dealing with kids and ageing parents has always been challenging, but modern American parenting, combined with modern American working culture, makes it all uniquely exhausting.

I found that the more I relaxed and didn’t get too involved in my kids’ lives, the better I was as a parent. Their problems are not my problems. I can provide advice and resources when called upon, but I shouldn’t feel their pains and joys too acutely. They are separate people. In the same way I should not impose too much of my burden of caring for elderly parents on them. I try to tell myself that the latter is a privilege too. It is hard, but it is beautiful too. Finding the right perspective is key.[/quote]

If the point of having kids is to maximize their SAT scores and college resumes, then the birthrate will continue to crater.

If the point of having kids is because humanity is good and we want to love them and make a family, maybe it will be higher, especially if connected to higher religious purpose.

But I'm not into forcing people to be religious or have children. I'm just saying that faith makes having kids worth it. [/quote]

The point of having kids used to be that they made life easier, in both hunter-gatherer and agrarian cultures. Even into the 20th century kids were extra, unpaid farmhands and sometimes factory laborers in the west. In parts of the world they still are. I'm not knocking or criticizing this way of life, by the way. It has benefits the modern "make a perfect resume kid" doesn't have even for kids (well, perhaps except when they were factory laborers, that basically had no benefits). But families had lots of kids when lots of kids was good for the family as a whole.[/quote]

Definitely true. So either we attach a higher purpose to having kids or we find ways to make them useful. I'm a big proponent of chores. Not only do they reduce screens, they teach skills and make the children feel useful. They also have benefits for parents.

I was discussing this with students a few years ago and one suggested that eventually things will get so bad again that people will be forced to have large families for survival. Personally, I'm not going to hope for that scenario! Doomerism is so overrated.

But to my stressed out parents. Definitely work on the chore aspect. There's no reason at all that children, even those in elementary school, can't be doing 1/2 hour of solid chore work per day. A little more wouldn't be unreasonable either. [/quote]

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